


[a moment to catch my breath]

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: [to see you there] [13]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Comfort, F/M, Missing Scene, Post-Winter Soldier (movie), Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-06
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-01-18 09:51:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1424143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s an email. It’s got nonsense Korean and it’s got the gibberish of html-errors and it’s got a bunch of incomprehensible English and if you translate it all and sort it out the most you can make of it is that it’s offering some kind of cheap deal on banking. The address of origin is a string of numbers and letters and so is the domain. It looks like spam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Post- _Captain America: Winter Soldier_ ; spoilers for the film.

It’s an email. It’s got nonsense Korean and it’s got the gibberish of html-errors and it’s got a bunch of incomprehensible English and if you translate it all and sort it out the most you can make of it is that it’s offering some kind of cheap deal on banking. The address of origin is a string of numbers and letters and so is the domain. It looks like spam. 

The name attached to the address is _June Liland_. And in the middle of the text-field, contributing to the whole effect, is the word _honeymoon_ twice, one right after the other. 

When it arrives on his personal phone, Clint hits the “junk mail” flag and deletes it, puts the phone back in his pocket. He finishes his Coke, slides his wallet into his back pocket, pulls on a jacket and walks out of the SHIELD safehouse where he’s been waiting (comfortably, he’s not complaining) for a debrief since last night. He leaves everything else, and he doesn’t come back. 

The next day someone in a bar a ways from the El Dorado Airport in Bogotá, a guy tries to change the TV from international news to sports, because he’s bored with hearing about whatever crap is going down in the US capital right now. It earns him a death threat, and it’s a credible one, so the TV stays the same. But it’s the kind of place where that stuff happens and other than to note that the white guy in the corner is a hostile asshole, nobody really makes much of it. 

 

There’s someone in the suite, but there’s also a blue scuff on the door, so Clint’s just wary as he goes inside and locks and bolts it behind him. The windows are still locked. There’s a beat-up worn black duffle thrown on the bed and a glass on the counter of the kitchenette with lipstick on it. The shower’s running. All of those are good signs. 

Clint leans one hand on the wall, kicks off his shoes and calls, “Marco.” 

The answering “Polo” is Tasha’s voice. It’s also tired, and coming from the bathroom. Clint pulls off his socks and grabs a beer out of the mini-fridge that’s a lot nicer than anything else in the place before he goes to the door, which is just barely ajar and letting small amounts of steam out into the wider room. He pushes it all the way open and in the cheap incandescent bulb’s yellow light the shower-steam swirls. 

There’s no tub, just a shower lined with chipped tile and usually surrounded by a crappy curtain, and Tasha sitting at the bottom of it, warm water running, still in her clothes, makeup mostly okay because it’s waterproof anyway, and Clint’s tequila bottle and a shot-glass beside her. She’s soaked. She’s pushed her hair back from her face enough that whatever part and style she had is gone, and it hangs haphazardly in wet tangles which, because it’s Tasha, look like she’s on a modelling shoot and because Clint knows her tell him she’s a mess. Her knees are bent and her arms are resting on them and for Tasha, she looks like hell. 

“You hate Bond,” Clint points out. Tasha gives him the two finger salute. 

“It’s sensory stimulus,” she says, flatly. She sits up a little, her knees falling sideways until she’s sitting crosslegged. “And how the fuck do you have this much warm water anyway?” 

Clint shrugs. “I stole one of those flash water heaters from Stark the last time I was there,” he says, completely unabashed. He knows his hatred of cold showers is one step away from legendary. “Or maybe eight or nine - the ones that look like extra-large marbles.” 

“You can’t steal shit from Stark,” Tasha says, letting the back of her head touch the wall. “He’d just give them to you anyway.” And if that’s not honing in on an irrelevant point Clint doesn’t know what is.

“Stealing sounds more exciting,” Clint replies. “Besides, I didn’t ask.” 

He steps over the slightly raised lip of the shower and sits down beside her, ignoring the water that soaks into his jeans where he sits and down the side of his body that’s under the spray. She looks rough. He doesn’t think he’s actually seen her look this rough. He takes a drink of beer and she pours herself another shot of tequila and slugs it back. Clint raises his eyebrows; that bottle was full when he left this morning and it’s half empty now. 

Granted, he doesn’t know when she got in. But still. 

“That bad,” he says. Not so much a question. Of course, he knew it was _bad_. Something that ends with the complete destruction of SHIELD - figuratively _and_ literally - and the crashing of three prototype helicarriers, plus the revelation of, among other things, a huge number of accidents that were actually murders and hundreds of covert ops - that kind of sums up, requires and is the primary flawless exemplar of _bad_. But there’s bad, and then there’s _that_ bad. The details are important.

And Nat says, “Worse,” closing her eyes. 

After a moment’s pause Clint takes another drink, looks at her and says, “You do look like shit.” Another pause, because she doesn’t answer, and he asks, “You got a plan?” 

Nat sighs. “Wait until I stop feeling like this much shit,” she says, “and _then_ think about long-term plans. Subject to change if something from HYDRA shows up and tries to kill us.” 

The “us” is reassuring. So’s the fact that she’s here. He’s been worried - not concerned or anything like that, outright _worried_ as he obsessively kept up with the news. Not so much that she’d die. That wouldn’t make him happy, sure, but it’s always been a hazard and for people like them there’s worse things than death. And in spite of how hard he worked to hide for now, every day she didn’t show up he worried more. But “us” is a bit of reassurance. 

Her voice sounds flattened, and he’s pretty sure that beyond that monotone response anything she summoned up to convince people she was normal would be too-bright, too-nice, and also creep Clint right out to Hell and back. He’ll take it as a good sign she doesn’t feel the need to do that here. 

After a few more minutes of drinking in silence she says, in an attempt at humour that falls horribly short, “I think I’ve discovered whole new worlds of _compromised._ ” 

Clint can’t actually argue with that. When it comes down to it, _he’s_ more than a bit off-balance, because his life’s revolved around SHIELD for a long time now, but it’s not the same. He knows it’s not the same. 

He says, “Patronizing kiss on the top of the head help?” because seriously beyond presence and inappropriate levity, he’s got nothing right now. He expects to get a nasty look at least, if not a smack, but Nat just ends up with a ghost smile, the kind that mostly hurt. 

“Actually, yeah,” she says. And Clint gives her a startled look. 

“Christ, you really must feel like shit,” he says. But he moves close enough to put an arm around her shoulder and, after she leans her head on his, kisses the top of her head. 

“I haven’t slept for sixty-seven hours,” she says. “I actually can’t remember when I last ate.” Then she adds, “But I’m not getting up yet.” 

“I figured,” Clint says. “I don’t have any plans.”


	2. Chapter 2

It takes about an hour more for Clint to coax Nat out from under the hot water and in to some dry clothes out of her bag. She gives him a dire look when, dressed and dry except for her hair, he hands her can of chocolate flavoured meal-replacement sludge and a handful of vitamins, but she does take them with bad grace, downs the vitamins and sits down with the shake beside her, taking intermittent gulps as she yanks a comb through her hair and then french-braids it back. 

The look turns less dire and more dangerously flat when he tosses her the bottle of sleeping pills, but Clint folds his arms and says, mildly, "A hallucinating Natasha is nobody's friend, especially yours. And you're pushing it, Nat. And don't try telling me you'll just sleep," he adds, as her eyes flick upwards in the momentary search for some way to argue with him, which means she's _really_ rough right now. "We both know that's bullshit." 

Jaw tightening, Tasha twists the top off of the bottle like she's breaking someone's neck and tosses back a dose and the rest of the shake. "Why did I ever let you get to know me this well?" she demands, standing up and rolling her neck, her shoulders and stretching out her legs before she folds herself onto the bed, lying sort of curled up on her left side. 

If you knew what you were looking for, you could see just how fast she could throw herself out of the bed from there. Clint passes over her Glock and one of her knives. 

"Because," he says, "I'm adorable." He settles himself down in the battered wooden chair at the crappy folding table with his P30, his knives and a couple of grenades because hey, you never know. She pointedly rolls her eyes before closing them, but she probably saw him smile anyway. 

She took a high enough dose that it only takes a few minutes before it puts her to sleep, whether her hypervigilance likes it or not. After a little while, when her half-curl starts getting tighter and pulling her arms in, he gets up and drapes the folded blanket over her and then goes back to his spot. 

There's a trick to this kind of watch, which is to be able to think about things stupid enough not to absorb all your attention while still being interesting enough to keep you from either zoning out or actually falling asleep. And a shit-ton of practice, of course. Never forget that part. 

His new phone beeps every now and again, one of the apps scanning pretty much every news source on Earth that's online for key-words, phrases, names. It's all pretty much still people yelling about the database-drop, and then about HYDRA, and how it's all some other country's fault. For a while Russia and China'd been being very superior, before leaks and investigative journalists let the whole world know that - as it happened - both countries had had at least as much to purge out of their intelligence agencies as anyone in NATO. Now they and the US are all blaming each other and demanding accountability. 

Apparently the White House briefly thought about making hosting or distributing the SHIELD files a felony. Stark Industries had issued a press release that had _literally_ been a quote of the White House release with the words "Come at me, bro," underneath. 

Clint wondered how long Potts had shouted about _that_ , and how Stark got it past her in the first place. But that story had mysteriously dropped off the face of the Earth with no further developments.

It's been about six hours, which is honestly at least one more hour than Clint expected, before Natasha responds to his suppressed snort of laughter at the latest thing to scroll up with slowly opening her eyes and a gravelly, "What?"

"You made the Daily Show," Clint tells her. She rubs at her eyes, still sleepy the way she only gets when she's had to drug herself to sleep. 

"My life's goal finally achieved," she says, deadpan. She blinks a few times and shifts, pulling the pillow over to wrap one arm over. "Which bit made you laugh?" 

"'Since the leak of the SHIELD documents,'" Clint quotes, "'the world's most famous spy - '"

"Nng," Nat says, putting her face in her pillow. "Things I definitely never wanted for a thousand, Alex . . . "

"' - has become Congress' most wanted fugitive,'" Clint continues and then pauses. "Really? They're not bugging Rogers at all? Last I heard he refused to even show up and talk to them." 

"Well," Tasha replies, turning her face back to look at him, "the _last_ time someone tried to detain Rogers he jumped out of the fortieth floor and then single-handedly killed a quinjet with a motorbike and his shield." The amusement briefly flickering in her eyes isn't very nice. "Then he wrecked a big chunk of DC and crashed three helicarriers into the Triskelion. Maybe they decided to take the hint." 

Clint gives her a pointed look. "Nat," he says, "the last time someone who wasn't me tried to detain _you_ , eighty people died, and you didn't have a vibranium shield or elite backup. Or any backup. And I know that's in the SHIELD files too." 

"Maybe they're slow readers," she says. "Or maybe they're just making a lot of noise about me without doing shit and they decided ragging on Rogers all over the media wasn't getting them good numbers in the polls. Keep going," she adds, "that's obviously not it." 

"'Which brings us to a new segment that we're calling: "Widow Watch 2014" or "Seriously, she put every alias she's ever used on the Internet and you still can't find her?"'" 

That does get a brief smile, which is nice. Clint puts the phone's screen to sleep and puts it on the table. "What's Rogers doing now?" 

"Oh, fuck," Tasha says with a sigh that almost sounds distressed, "that is such a fucking long story, Clint." 

For a moment it looks like she's going to get up. Then she doesn't, and just stares in front of her for a minute like a thought crept up on her and ate her whole brain. So Clint leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees and asks, "What?" 

Natasha's gaze flicks up to meet his and then back to her middle distance before she says, "Fury didn't trust me," in a quiet, flat voice, the kind Clint hasn't heard from her in a lot time. "He's alive," she says, and Clint's not exactly _surprised_ , given who they're talking about, "but he let me think he was dead, because he didn't know if he could trust me." 

Well, Clint thinks. Shit. 

He glances up at the ceiling to bite his tongue on the curses yanked up all at once by just general loyalty. No wonder she's this messed up. The whole HYDRA thing's bad enough, because being used without even knowing it hits almost every Tasha-button Clint knows about, but that'd be the last one, and the big one, and the one that fucks everything up. 

"It's Fury, Tash," he says quietly, even though he doesn't think it'll help that much. "If he could actually split his brain down the middle, the left half wouldn't really trust the right half."

"Maria knew," Natasha replies, no more inflection to her voice, not like she's arguing. Just noting. Clint rubs at his eyebrow with his thumb. 

"Yeah, well," he says. "Setting that kind of shit up's Maria's job. Was Maria's job." 

She doesn't answer, either to accept or deny. Clint doesn't really expect her to. He gets up and crosses to the bed, sits down beside her with his back against the wall and his legs out in front of him, ankles crossed. 

"I trust you," he says, looking over until she looks up. And he adds, "Yes, really. And even if it's a bad idea. And, you know, whatever other objections you were going to come up with, just assume the answer's still yes." 

It takes a minute, and the smile is slow and small and exhausted, but it exists when she says, "Thank you," for at least a heartbeat or two. 

They sit in silence for a while, now with one of Nat's hands resting just above his knee, while Clint contemplates the future and - presumably - Natasha works on shoving all the screaming in her head back into the right boxes. After what probably amounts to about an hour, Clint takes a deep breath, blows it out and sits up. 

"Fuck it," he says, and Tasha pushes herself up to half-sitting, more of the drug worn off now, her eyes less sleepy. Her question's all in her frown. 

"First," Clint says, "we're going for a walk and hitting up a stall for some real food. Then we're going to Disney World." 

Tasha stares at him, frown still in place. It looks more forbidding than usual, with her hair braided back. When he doesn't admit to a joke, she says, "What the hell, Barton?" 

"See," Clint replies, "I haven't had a vacation in about ten years. I bet you've _never_ had a vacation - 'psychological recovery semi-leave-if-we-don't-suddenly-remember-something-we-need-you-to-do' doesn't count," he adds, heading her off, "SHIELD's broken for now, so the hell with it. Let's go to Disney World. Or hey, we could go to Paris and walk around _without_ looking for anyone to shoot." 

Natasha blinks at him. She looks down at her hand like she's thinking, and then eventually shrugs. "Why not?" she says, sitting the rest of the way up, her legs crossing. "Every stray HYDRA minion we come across is probably going to try to kill me, though," she adds. Clint shrugs. 

"It'll keep us from getting bored," he says. "Let's go get food."

**Author's Note:**

> Fictional Daily Show quote and mentioned press release about making hosting the SHIELD files illegal originally from [Press Agents of Shield,](http://pressagentsofshield.tumblr.com) a tumblr that gives me much joy.


End file.
